So Lodestone Golem was the card that really forced people to devote half of the sideboard to Shops. Before then, you'd have a Hurkyl's in the maindeck and probably about 3 cards in the sideboard. That was all you really needed. Now that Chalice is restricted, you have to worry even less about diversifying mana costs (Hurkyls, Rebuild).

I expect a sharp decline in the use of Ingot Chewer out of sideboards.

Lightning Bolt will also diminish slightly in use; Id argue Lodestone was the primary force behind it beginning to see mainstream play back when it did.

One thing im curious to see is whether or not Jace, TMS becomes too OP without Lodestone around to challenge it; Jace is really great against Shops if they can't attack it.

If people start playing 2 less pieces of MUD hate, then MUD won't suffer Lodestone restriction a lot. Lodestone puts a clock, but allows playing moxen by free. Thorn and sphere don't. They can lock you with crucible+waste; play metalworker or kuldotha into BSC or Sundering; use hellkite to remove your board; swarm you with little robots; play uba mask to keep exiling cards from your library. And more, much more.

From my side, I'm planning to play at least 2 engineered explosives (in order to clean revoker, spheres, ravager) and complement with disenchant (null rod is a threaten). Probably try to fit pithing for wasteland, hitting kuldotha or triskelion if necessary. All are cards that should be useful in other pairings too.

@shawnthehero We are far past the days in which Restoration Angel and David Bowie were anti-Jace technology. He went from one of the best cards in Vintage to matchup dependent - great against Blue control decks and Oath, miserable against Delver, meh against Mentor builds (with only mentors and JVPs) and Storm (potentially game ending but slow). Against Shops, I'm not sure how the lack of LSG will play out but Shops still has spheres that make him hard to cast, revoker to shut him down, and man lands for pressure.

Yeah, but once you get him down (Ideally turn 1) you're just making land drops every turn and their Spheres are meaningless. It's also not hard to get down later considering they're pressuring you with Lodestone Golems 75% less of the time; you just fire off a Hurkyl's and cast Jace and win the game

I played him last year at NYSE in my Stoneforge/Mentor deck. It was just phenomenal. I played him in the Erayo/Prison deck. He was phenomenal there too. He has some specific weaknesses, but 4 mana 3/4s have little to do with how good Jace is

@shawnthehero I mentioned Restoration Angel as it was played in part to kill Jace. They cast their 4 mana planeswalker and you respond to their Brainstorm trigger with a 3 power flier. It was a sign of JTMS's dominance in the NE (which you alluded to).

And yes, Shawn, Jace is a very good card... If I expected Big Blue and Oath to be more popular, I would think him a major player going forward. Unfortunately, I think Mentor and Young Pyromancer decks are going to be the the more popular and that is not good news for our 4-mana friend.